


Stolen Voices

by watercolourcommunism



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Discussions and implications of rape, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Found Family, Gen, Grooming, M/M, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Other, Past Abuse, Revenge, Thieves Guild, Thieves Guild Questline, Trauma, Unreliable Narrator, Unreliable dialogue and exposition. A lot of liars in this story., Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2019-08-21 22:37:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16585574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watercolourcommunism/pseuds/watercolourcommunism
Summary: Ottavio Bellandi knows Mercer is the most vile man alive, long before the Guildmaster betrays him at Snow Veil Sanctum. When Mercer escapes and Karliah is forced to leave him for dead outside the ruins, Ottavio knows this was the only possible end. At least, until a wandering vampire decides to show him mercy."You want revenge? You want to be strong enough to defend yourself?" she asks, amber eyes burning into his skin. "Submit to Molag Bal. If you can survive him, no one will touch you again."Ottavio submits. Mercer's days are numbered.Follows the Thieves Guild questline, with a lot of liberties. Features a non-Dragonborn protagonist, Karliah, and Brynjolf as POV characters.





	1. Speaking With Silence

**Author's Note:**

> While there is no EXPLICIT sexual content, there are explicit discussions of past sexual abuse and one instance of NON-EXPLICIT non-con as a major plot point. Physical and sexual abuse are discussed or implied, as of now only emotional abuse is explicitly shown. Most of this fic focuses on the trauma caused by that abuse and none of the abuse is meant to be voyeuristic or sexy. Proceed with caution, warnings may change later. 
> 
> Mercer Frey is also portrayed VERY negatively, so YMMV.

The violent cold of Winterhold is an enemy not to be trifled with. Heavy snows muffle any sound and swallow the near distant town with its massive College, so that Ottavio feels as if he were going blind as well as deaf and numb. Mercer, however, doesn't seem to be bothered by the cold at all; with fingerless gloves Mercer carefully grasps and slides the long curved pieces that interlock to bar entry to Snow Veil Sanctum, his agility and precision not in the least affected by the freezing temperature. Ottavio glances in the direction of the College towers one last time before he begins to descend the steps to the ruins’ entryway. A curtain of white stubbornly obscures any sight of the closest source of help, and all he can see is Karliah’s dead horse laying half frozen on its side.

“There, that should do it,” Mercer mumbles to himself, watching the intricate braided iron door open, and Ottavio carefully picks his way down the stone steps to the waiting Guildmaster. “After you.”

Accompanying Mercer through the narrow ruins is every bit as unbearably hellish as Ottavio knew it would be. The walls press against either shoulder, and Ottavio feels Mercer’s breath on the back of his neck. He is trapped; Karliah likely lays in wait ahead, and Mercer stalks behind. Of the two, Ottavio isn’t sure he should fear Karliah more.

The ruins wind deep into the earth, and the thieves pick their silent way through the labyrinth. Every wrong turn Ottavio takes is corrected by a fist on his collar, slinging him unceremoniously toward the proper path, and Ottavio is only thankful that the walls are too close and silence too paramount for Mercer to bother striking him as punishment, as is so often his wont. Ottavio, lost and half blind in the dark, can't help but think that Mercer knows exactly how vulnerable and frightened he feels with the Guildmaster out of his sight and with full access to his back.

Thankfully, after an agonizing half hour, the halls begin to open up to small chambers more and more frequently, and even creeping past rows upon rows of sleeping draugr is worth getting some space. Some draugr are already awake, patrolling the dimly lit chambers in little paths worn into the stone floor after millennia of restless guard. Mercer handles himself with these better than Ottavio does; whereas Mercer’s golden Dwemer blades cut down the dead in gleaming arcs, Ottavio struggles to sink his dagger into the mummified flesh without staying in striking range for too long. There is little doubt that the Guildmaster is a better thief and swordsman, and there is also little doubt that Mercer does not intend Ottavio to be much real help in straight fight against Karliah. Ottavio hopes that Mercer brought him in case of medical attention or backup, and not just for the chance to torment him on the long trips to and from Winterhold, leagues out of sight of their fellow Guild members.

The two thieves pick their way through the labyrinthine ruin, until they finally step into a long, straight hallway, its walls covered in ancient murals. At the far end, a large, circular iron door, nearly nearly identical to the entry to the ruin but for its three rings of carved animals and empty keyhole, impedes their progress. Mercer unlocks this, too, though he doesn't bother to explain how without the key. Ottavio knows better than to ask, knowing that Mercer has little tolerance for ... well, anything but silence and obedience. 

“Lead on,” Mercer commands, an odd, mocking snideness to his tone and the twist of his mouth. There is no disagreeing with him.

Still, Ottavio hesitates. “She's going to attack me as soon as I open the door.”

Mercer’s hands twitch, and Ottavio knows the little harbingers of the Guildmaster’s wrath well enough. Ottavio dips his head so that his eyes stare at his feet and turns forward, giving Mercer his back. The puzzle door looms.

Ottavio presses against the circular plate where the missing claw ought to be inserted, and the whole wall trembles; the slow, tortured screeching of dull rock against rock doesn’t even come close to filling the heavy silence between him and Mercer. When the door finishes sinking into the floor, Ottavio creeps forward, hand on his dagger hilt. Aside from the torch light in the hall behind them, the room is dark - pitch, almost, and Ottavio is half watching his feet as much as blackness ahead --

_\-- thwik._

A sudden wall of force slams into Ottavio’s chest, pushing all the air out of his lungs and sending him to the floor, tipping him backward like a felled pine. Pain, white-hot searing _pain_ , seizes his chest, and he curls in on himself -- trembling, wheezing, slowing, slowing. Not moving.

Not moving. _She's here and she's killing him and he can't move he can't move he can't move --_

“Do you honestly think your arrow will reach me before my blade finds your heart?” Mercer’s voice. Snide. Dangerous. _Vicious_.

Panic begins to set in, overwhelming everything -- Mercer won’t save him, Ottavio is too worthless, too helpless, doesn’t deserve --

 _Fuck! Help me, help me help me helpmehelpme **helpme** you **hateful fucking bastard** \-- help me -- save me, save me, save me **please** \-- please don't leave me here --  _ ** _you did this to me,_** _you did this,_ _don't leave me --_

“Give me a reason to try.” Someone else. Karliah, somewhere in the dark. Calm and poised and apathetic to Ottavio's terror and pain. _Gods, Mercer, help me **please**_. Mercer’s boot steps silently around his face, inches from his nose, and in the periphery of his vision Ottavio barely sees the Guildmaster’s twin Dwemer swords raised.

Mercer and Karliah -- they talk, they _chat_ , almost leisurely, as Ottavio lies motionlessly between Mercer’s feet, straddled by his legs -- a woefully familiar position. A hysterical hiccup of laughter swells inside his chest but freezes within his motionless body.

Mercer won’t save him. He'd known; the Guildmaster knew from the start, like Ottavio had known but not acknowledged. This is exactly why Ottavio is here. Mercer used him as bait, a human shield; Mercer won’t save him now.

Karliah does -- something, Ottavio isn't sure. Can't understand what's going on, can't focus through the pain. But Mercer is standing over him, in front of him now.

“How interesting.” Drawling in that _voice -_ \- the one that makes Ottavio cower, tremble in fear, _if he could move at all_ \--

The familiar mantra rises, but Ottavio can’t voice it. _Please don’t -- don’t -- Mercer, please, Guildmaster please please -- don’t -- I'm begging you pleaseplease don't --_

Karliah has abandoned him. He is alone with Mercer, again. “It appears Gallus's history has repeated itself. Karliah has provided me with the means to be rid of you, and this ancient tomb becomes your final resting place.”

Nothing Mercer says makes sense, but Ottavio wouldn’t ask even if he could; there is no questioning the Guildmaster. Ottavio is still as a corpse, and Mercer may as well be speaking to the ancient tomb itself. It’s funny, almost, how Ottavio is almost thankful that whatever’s happening to him, whatever prevents him from moving, it makes him as small and still and unobtrusive as possible.

“But do you know what intrigues me the most? The fact that this was all possible because of _you_. Farewell. I'll be certain to give Brynjolf your regards."

Mercer raises his blades. Ottavio doesn’t even get the chance to realize what’s happening before it already has, and Dwarven metal sinks deep into his gut.

* * *

 

.

.

Ottavio flitters in and out of consciousness. Images, noises, sensations flash by with no rhyme or reason. Mercer talking. Mercer stabbing down.

.

.

Black.

.

.

A glimpse of a long, dim hallway lined with fallen draugr, tilted and growing smaller as he is seemingly dragged across the ground by his feet. 

.

.

Black.

.

.

The ground under him stinging at his exposed skin as his face presses against snow and wind races by his ear. Shouting. Movement. Silence.

.

.

Black.

.

.

* * *

The cold doesn’t hurt so badly the next time he wakes up. He can’t move, and snow has begun to pile on his body, but it doesn’t hurt so much. The paralysis poison prevents Ottavio from even shivering, much less from breathing any harder than at a slow, idle measure. The eye not pressed against the ground can barely make out the edge of the outside of the temple ruins, illuminated only by the distant sunset. Someone dragged him from the Sanctum and abandoned him in the snow. Not Mercer surely; Mercer meant for the tomb to be his final resting place, not the ground outside it. And it didn’t make sense for him to go through the trouble of dragging him through the tomb just to drop him. 

_I’ll be certain to give Brynjolf your regards._

Is Brynjolf here? Did Brynjolf find him, drag him outside, and leave him? Did Mercer hurt him, too, leave them both to die?

The cold doesn’t hurt anymore. Ottavio feels nothing, not pain, not cold, not his own body. He must be dying, he realizes. It’s certainly taking him a long time to do so; Ottavio lays there until the sun sinks completely, and its light is replaced by the stars and aurorae shining high and bright.

Eventually, he hears the snow shift behind him. Brynjolf? _Mercer?_

A long, low whistle sounds. A mutter of, “This fucker’s still alive…” A voice he doesn't recognize.

 _Help me._ Ottavio can’t form the words, can’t even see the figure to beg with his free eye. Help me, help me help me _please_.

“Can you move? Feel my hand?” Of course, Ottavio can’t do either. “What, are you so frozen? The frostbite looks bad enough. It’s a wonder the hypothermia hasn’t taken you already. Well, fine. It doesn't look impossible. Let's get you out of the cold.”

It is horribly disconcerting when suddenly Ottavio is lifted up from the ground, still completely unable to feel the hands holding him. It’s almost as if Kynareth herself scooped him up, cradling him with her wind. Taking him far from this place so cursed with betrayal and murder. 

The figure turns toward the southern mountains, Ottavio stiffly dangling in their grip, and Snow Veil Sanctum vanishes in the snow.


	2. Cat And Mouse

Karliah has been waiting for this day for a long, long time. Too long to allow any of Mercer's predictable tricks to waylay her now. She won't indulge Mercer a fight, and tells him as much; she will not allow this to end in vain.

With an invisibility potion and the labyrinthine layout of the final chamber, Mercer has little hope of catching Karliah as she crawls between the stone columns and terraces and escapes out the small collapsed opening in the back of the tomb. Mercer lets her go; he returns to the paralyzed body of his Guildmate, swords raised.

This isn't over. The gate of Snow Veil Sanctum's north entrance is lodged between the walls of a glacial crevice, well hidden from view of the main ruins. The sunlight reflecting off the white snow and high walls are blinding as Karliah emerges. She pulls her sabre cloak tightly around her shoulders, and, still invisible, creeps down through the crevice to the frozen coast. Even if Mercer pursues her, he won't follow her into the ice fields. It's dangerous enough following normal prey into the ice fields  -- but an invisible foe with a bow and a vendetta? Suicide.

It's a risky leap from the floating ice to the island across, but Karliah holds her breath and takes it. She clings to the island's high cliff face and slowly works her way around it until the ground gradually slopes down and she's able to climb the steep path up. There's a cave here, near the top of the island, that Karliah had found a year ago when she planned her escape route. It is here that she waits.

She has to go back, sooner rather than later. It offends her instinct and training to leave a good hideout prematurely, but she'll have to. Once Mercer abandons this snowy hellscape, she has to go back. For the boy. The Guild's rising star, who'd so admirably followed her carefully scattered trail of breadcrumbs. Karliah has seen him before; she watched him stalk the fool Gulum-Ei down to the docks in Solitude. She recognized him in the Sanctum’s final chamber, as the great puzzle door shook and groaned and sank into the floor and an Imperial male only a few inches taller than Mercer stepped into the room.

She shot him. She would never be able to hit Mercer in time, so she shot the boy instead, and watched him crumple to the floor at Mercer's feet. Where, presumably, he's still lying, as there is no doubt in Karliah's mind that Mercer intended to kill him; hopefully, _hopefully_ , the paralytic will keep him from bleeding out until she can return and heal him.

It's only fortunate that the Imperial lays _inside_ the ruin, for what little shelter it offers, rather than out in this increasingly more and more wretched wind and cold. And hopefully, too, the possibility of a blizzard forming will cut short Mercer's hunt and drive him off.

Eventually, after only the gods know how long, Karliah warily emerges from her shelter, pulling on the hood of her great white sabre cloak and holding her bow at the ready, and ventures back into the glacial crevice up to Snow Veil Sanctum. She adopts a slow, silent creep that would be absolutely agony on her nerves if not for years and years of discipline; after all, it's entirely possible that Mercer decided to take shelter in the ruins. Unlikely, knowing his tendency to make quick, clean escapes from his crimes, but possible. Besides, he knows Karliah is hunting him as well, that this game is not so unbalanced as to be one of cat and mouse.

If anyone is the mouse, it is the poor thief crumpled on the floor. Karliah hesitates, first scanning the chamber for visible and invisible figures alike, and slowly climbs down the terraces and slinks across the dark room to where Mercer’s victim lays on his side. The sight of the Imperial - still as the grave, curled in on himself, all blood drained from his face - is so familiar that Karliah feels her blood turn to ice. She holds off the need to vomit and attempts not to see Gallus’s face, frozen dead with shock and betrayal, staring up at her as she has to physically pry the Imperial’s knees away from his head, force him to straighten ever so slightly so that she can inspect the damage that Mercer has done.

Two stab wounds, narrow and deep, sink into his abdomen where the leather Guild armor is thinner and more flexible and unable to fully protect the soft guts underneath. Karliah tries not to think of how Mercer had chosen to stab Gallus through the heart rather than the gut -- Mercer knows damn well how to kill someone quickly and efficiently. The sheer cruelty of Mercer denying his Guildmate a merciful death, of intentionally leaving him to bleed out instead, makes Karliah’s fingers tremble with rage. Knowing that such rage can be careless and costly, she moves with deliberate slowness as she checks her small leg pouch for the paralytic antidote and considers her next move.

There is no way she can handle this wound on her own; should Karliah give him the antidote, the moment his heart starts pumping with any real speed or pressure, the Imperial will bleed to death. The pitifully small wrap of gauze and health potion vials in her pouch are far too insufficient to stop that kind of blood loss, but Karliah dedicates them to the task nonetheless, patching him up at least a little; still, better to keep him paralyzed than give him the antidote and risk exsanguination. The paralytic won’t wear off for a _considerable_ amount of time -- long enough for Karliah to drag Mercer from here to Riften to face the Guild, and certainly long enough to get to the College of Winterhold, where some of Skyrim’s best healers reside. If the Imperial can be saved at all, the College mages are far more suited to the daunting task than Karliah’s paltry collection of potions and amateur knowledge of first aid. Karliah just needs to get him there.

Just needs to … haul a paralyzed body bigger than she is, through a blizzard, while avoiding Mercer, all the way to Winterhold. If she can pull that off, convincing (paying, more likely) the mages to help will be comparatively simple.

Karliah throws herself into the task before she can start dreading it. She pours what little health potion she has into his mouth, grips the Imperial under his arms and pulls him through the sunken circular door and down the long halls of the ruins; the northern entrance would probably be shorter -- and safer -- but Karliah has little expectation of being able to drag him up a glacier. Hopefully her horse is still alive, but knowing Mercer, it likely isn’t.

The prospect of waking the few draugr still lining the walls and the paranoia that Mercer could still be anywhere in the ruins makes a slow, discouraging challenge even worse. Halfway through the ruins, Karliah adjusts her grip on the Imperial, grabbing him by his feet and tucking them under one arm so that she can have her front facing forward. She cringes and murmurs an apology as one side of the Imperial’s face drags along the floor, but the going _is_ faster this way. As much as she wants to avoid damaging his head or torso any further, the mages will heal him anyway.

Thankfully, the number of remaining draugr dwindle the closer to the entrance, Mercer seems to have already vacated the ruins by the time Karliah reaches the front. Once outside, getting the Imperial up the spiral stairs is its own ordeal, and one Karliah devotes more focus to than she prefers. The rush of relief and success as Karliah pulls the Imperial’s limp body free of the Sanctum almost makes up for the effort it took to get there.

Her horse is dead, of course. Its front legs are broken in halves, and its throat gapes wide open, bits of its windpipe laying across the snow. The travel pack attached to the saddle is similarly open, its contents pilfered and strewn about. Shallow footprints lead toward the main road and disappear.

Across the glacier, then. Well, travelling straight across the glacier and to Winterhold is a shorter distance than taking the road, anyway. Karliah again adjusts her grip on the Imperial, and starts the long trial. It is worse than unfortunate that she emptied her vials of invisibility potion during her earlier escape, especially as the afternoon sun bears down. At least it isn’t nighttime, but she has to hurry to have that advantage for much longer.

The sound of a blade scraping against its scabbard breaks into Karliah’s thoughts. _Shit_. Before she can even turn around to see him, Karliah drops the Imperial’s body, whips out her bow, and brandishes it out in front of her just quickly enough to catch a Dwemer blade on the bow’s ebony middle.

“I thought you were smarter than that, Karliah!” Mercer shouts, swinging his free sword.

 _Shit shit shit_. Unable to dodge while holding off one sword, Karliah takes the full brunt of the other. She falls hard to the snow and her own words echo in her ear: _Crossing blades with you would be a death sentence_.

No. _Not yet_.

Karliah rolls just enough to avoid Mercer’s downward strike, rears her legs back, and kicks his knees in as hard as she can. Mercer collapses with a suspicious _crack_ and a furious shout, and Karliah rolls away again -- jumps to her feet -- and _runs._  She can’t see the coast from here but she knows where it is and she sprints toward it. Behind her, Mercer gives chase with a limp in his gait.

 _Shit shit shit shitshitshit_. The freezing cold bites at her face and throat and lungs as she runs, crippling her ability to breathe. North of the ruins, the snow is packed deep, and just breaking through it slows Karliah’s pace dramatically; Mercer, meanwhile, follows her cleared path. Karliah risks the few seconds it takes to nock an arrow and turn, letting it fly with only the barest bit of visual aiming. She doesn’t stop to see if it hits -- it doesn’t, if the sound of Mercer’s nearing footsteps and labored breathing indicates -- before she nocks and loosens another arrow and keeps running.

When the slope down to the coast finally comes into view, Karliah practically throws herself down it. She runs as far as the black beach extends into the ocean and leaps without hesitation to the unsteady ice floes. The first floe holds, but the second gives way under her, and Karliah breaks through; it’s shallow enough that the water only comes to her knees, but the water’s chill punches the air from her lungs.

“You’ll freeze out there, you fool!” Mercer shouts, apparently hesitant to descend the slope. “You think you’re escaping? The cold’ll kill you for me!”

Karliah would have smiled if she weren’t breathing so hard. Instead, she spins around and nocks another arrow -- Mercer is a much easier target when he’s standing still, and this time her arrow nearly grazes the top of his head. He swears loudly and drops to the ground, protected from her arrows by the snowy bluff. Karliah turns away from him, wading through the water and climbing on solid ice floes when she can, all the while heading north toward a small island in the distance. Mercer does not follow her. Evidently, her life is not worth following into the freezing ocean.  


* * *

 

 

By the time Karliah is shivering too hard to breathe and her limbs are too cold to run, the island of the Serpent Stone is just within reach. She heaves herself out of the water and drops onto her back on the snow. Blood streams unsteadily out of the gash in her side, which is alight with pain from continual exertion and ocean salt. She can’t move any further, but she can’t see Mercer anymore either. This will do.

 _No, it won’t, you fool. You’re going to freeze to death_.

Karliah groans, but the little voice in her mind is right. Mercer is right. She can’t stop here.

It takes three attempts to pull herself up; even then, she stumbles aimlessly across the little island, unable to remember what to do. How to live. The evening sun shines directly into her eyes, obscures what may be another, larger island further west; an island with some sort of massive tower structure on it. She sets out toward it, climbing on top of another ice floe and using it as a makeshift raft, her Nightingale bow a sorry oar.

Another, smaller island lies between her and her goal, closer to the Serpent Stone Island. The distance between the two isn’t long, but by the time Karliah crosses it, she’s having considerable difficulty with her vision in a way that has nothing to do with the setting sun. _About to faint,_ her good sense whispers to her. _Sit down a moment. Rest._

No, _not yet_. Sleeping, fainting, here will kill her. The snow will sap the little remaining warmth from her body. There is no rest here. Karliah slips her bow string across her chest and its arms against her back, steadfastly ignoring the how wet, stinging cold the ebony is, and pushes herself along; unsteady and stumbling on the ice, ignoring the pain from her body as it demands, _screams_ for rest. She staggers back into the water even as her vision darkens erratically, mumbling incoherent prayers to Nocturnal - or Mara, Azura, _anyone_ \- to keep her moving, to give her the strength to overcome even her own body as it wants so dearly to simply collapse.

Soaking wet, half-dead with cold and exhaustion, Karliah falls onto her hands and knees on black beach. After a moment of hard breathing, she strains her neck upwards at the massive towers she’d seen before.

The long, looming shadow of the College of Winterhold hangs over her like a funerary shroud.

 _Of course_. Karliah bites back an ironic, hysterical giggle and tries not to picture the wounded thief she’d abandoned in the snow. Tries not to faint.

The College of Winterhold is nestled atop a staggeringly tall, steep slope that almost crushes Karliah’s resolve before she even starts. But she didn’t come this far to drop just outside safety’s door; she drags her stumbling legs to the base of the cliff, again drops to her hands and knees, and claws herself through the snow, literally crawling up the slope. The snow impedes her progress, falling back in on the path she clears for herself like a cruel paradox. The work is so difficult she doesn’t even notice when a distant voice calls out to her.

No. There’s no way. There’s no way she can climb this, not in her current condition. It doesn’t matter that she has no choice. She can’t do it.

Karliah stops. Only for a moment. On her forearms and knees, soaking wet, freezing, and bleeding, she lets her head drop onto the snow. The voice calls out to her again, this time much closer, but Karliah is too tired to look up - too tired to feel any fear, even. Just resignation, and exhaustion. The black spots in her vision grow, and this time, Karliah allows her eyes to close.

She barely takes notice of the voices - multiple now - converging around her. Only when a hand grabs her by the scruff of her cloak and drags her forward is Karliah startled enough to force herself into wakefulness again, her legs sluggishly flailing under her as she is half carried, half dragged up the steep slope. Exhausted, disoriented, and freezing, Karliah’s usually deft hands are too clumsy to fetch her dagger, to pull herself free of the steel grip --

“Enough. I am trying to _help_ you,” the voice snaps, quiet but commanding. “Either stand or let me carry you.”

Karliah means to oblige, attempting to stumble to her feet, but her weak legs give out from under her. As she falls to her knees (again), Karliah glances up at the small crowd she has attracted.

The steel grip and stern voice belong to a rather severe-looking Altmer, golden eyes glaring down at Karliah through rogue wisps of auburn hair and the dramatic shadow cast by her fur-lined hood. A Breton woman, face about as stern-looking but less hostile than the Altmer, strides over through the tall snow as Karliah is unceremoniously pulled to her feet. A little ways off, a Bosmer carefully picks his way down the steep path, his gaze downward, evidently fixed on his feet, and face hidden from Karliah’s view. All three wear vibrant, sharply angled robes under their thick furs. _Mages._

“You may need to carry her,” the Breton woman notes, coolly recognizing Karliah’s struggle to remain upright. “We need to move quickly and get her dried off.”

A fresh wave of shivering sets Karliah’s teeth chattering too much to offer any kind of response. The Altmer _hmm_ s in acknowledgement and effortlessly sweeps Karliah up onto tall, broad shoulders and bodily carries her up the snowy slope.

“Do we know how long she’s been out here, or where she came from?” the Breton asks, raising her hands to cast a Restoration spell that wipes away the worst of the shivering and starts a small stroke of warmth in Karliah’s chest.

“Somewhere northeast of Skytemple Isle,” the Altmer rumbles. “I would have seen her from Septimus’s if she came from the west.”

Karliah nods weakly in confirmation, but most of her energy remains focused on simply staying conscious. The two mages continue to debate her origins and motives as the Bosmer joins them.

“...She’s obviously not one of the local hunters,” the Breton is saying. “We don’t know who she is or what she was doing out there. We’ll heal her, but the College is not a hospital or inn. I suppose after Master Collette is done with her, we ought to send her off to the Frozen Hearth.”

“She can stay at the College, Mirabelle. I’ll vouch for her,” the Bosmer abruptly interjects, raising his head to meet Karliah’s upside-down gaze. It is fortunate that Karliah is too exhausted to express her shock.

Mirabelle expresses her own surprise, and drills him with questions, first personal - _do you know this woman?_ \- which the Bosmer artfully dodges, and then logistical - _you realize you’ll be responsible for her behavior?_ \- which he accepts much more readily; through the exchange, the Altmer remains silent, more focused on carefully and deliberately watching her own feet as they cross Winterhold’s precarious stone bridge in the howling wind. For her own part, Karliah closes her eyes and breathes deeply, enormously thankful that the Altmer says nothing about Karliah’s weak, trembling grip on the mage’s arm.

The creaking groan of metal on metal signals their arrival at the gates of the College; Karliah, her head halfway upside down and hanging limply off the Altmer’s shoulders, vaguely makes out the iron-wrought eye peering at any who would enter the campus grounds before the gates swing open in welcome.

The other mages of Winterhold are surprisingly cavalier when their colleagues stride through the main gates with a limp, bleeding, half-frozen Dunmer slung across their shoulders. Two of the College guards wordlessly flock to the Altmer, helping to support Karliah’s weight between the three of them, while Mirabelle issues orders to a curious apprentice standing by. The Altmer and the College guards bring Karliah into a sidetower, the Bosmer trailing along, and deposit her in a first floor room with a bare mattress. Another authoritative, tiny Breton woman - addressed by the others as Master Colette - joins them, relieving the male guard and shooing the Bosmer out into the hall.

The women set to work with impressive efficiency, first pulling off Karliah’s soaking boots and shimmying her out of the rest of her wet clothes. Karliah is too exhausted to help or stop them, only vaguely thankful that at least they had the thoughtfulness to have female mages undress her. Though the fact that Karliah can see the shadowy outline of the back of the Bosmer’s head in the hall does not necessarily bother her.

The mages talk amongst themselves as they work, carefully cleaning and stitching her open wound, hands aglow with Restoration, and only occasionally addressing Karliah directly, usually to ask questions. Does this hurt? (Enormously.) What gave you this wound? (Dwarven sword.) Can you feel this? (Unfortunately, yes.) How are you breathing? (With effort.) And so on. They prod at her chest with odd spells, slowly warming up her core, and methodically do the same for her limbs and the rest of her body.

Every bit of tangible progress sees the loss of a healer; once Karliah’s side wound is healed, the Altmer excuses herself, noting that the others have everything under control. Once Karliah’s torso and limbs are warm, the female College guard disappears. By the time the mages dim their magic and swaddle Karliah in thick furs, only the Breton women and lurking Bosmer remain.

“There you are,” Colette pronounces primly. “People may laugh at and belittle Restoration, but they run to us for the most minor and major injuries alike! Bet you won’t go swimming in freezing water again soon, hm?” she shrills, her tone choked with smugness.

“Yes,” Karliah demurs, still shocked at their quick efficiency. “Thank you.”

“Now, there is the matter of payment,” Colette adds, standing from her seat next to the bed and collecting the various potions and bandages and tools she’d brought with her. “If you can afford it. I did have to dismiss my class and use several of my potions on you.”

At this, Mirabelle speaks up from where she had been inspecting Karliah’s wet, torn clothes. “Yes, and we’re going to have to clothe and feed you, too. For security reasons, we generally don’t allow non-mage visitors to the College, and we don’t have many amenities to spare.”

The Bosmer pokes his head in through the open doorway. “I’ll cover the costs, Mirabelle. I owe this woman a favor.”

“Really?” Mirabelle asks, her brow raised and her tone slow with … skepticism, maybe? Speculation? “I suppose that’s fine, then. We’ll work it out later. Let me know soon, Enthir. You know where to find me.”

“Of course.” Enthir slips into the room as the Breton women exit it, almond eyes sparkling.

“It’s been quite a long time, Karliah. I expect you have quite a tale, to come washing up on shore like that.”

Despite the absolute hell that the day has brought her, Karliah finds herself warm, healed, protected by the tall, thick walls of the College and its dangerous inhabitants, and now in the presence of a familiar, trusted colleague and friend. A small, weary smile steals onto her face. “It wasn’t my intended way of getting to town.” She blinks heavily, and her next words are slurred by a yawn. “Originally I thought I’d catch you in the inn.”

Enthir sighs deeply, visibly pushing the day’s stress from his chest. “That would have certainly been better, but it doesn’t look like you had a choice. Karliah, is someone after you? Is it….?” He trails off, seemingly not wanting to summon the man by speaking his name aloud.

Karliah hesitates to answer; unable to see out into the main, circular hall, she has no idea who’s listening. “Yes,” she replies, her voice a whisper, “I don’t know where he is now. The weather will probably drive him to town, if it hasn’t already.”

Enthir casts a glance over his shoulder and back into the hall, his hands briefly glowing with what is presumably a Detect spell before he nods in understanding. “Well, he isn’t getting on campus without an invite. Mirabelle stepped up the security lately, and getting across the bridge and into the gate unnoticed is damned near impossible even in good weather.”

“Are there any other points of entry he could find?” Karliah asks through another yawn, her paranoia only slightly tempered by sheer exhaustion.

“There’s one, through a cave to the north that connects to the Midden.” Enthir responds, his tone growing increasingly wry, “that is, if he’s willing to wade over to the island, knows exactly where it is, can see in the dark, climb up a sheer cliff in a blizzard, survive the Labyrinth that is the Midden, and then deal with the guards.” Slightly more seriously, he adds, “You’re in the same tower as some of the most dangerous mages in Skyrim; I’ll even let them know to be on the lookout. You’ll be safe here. You should sleep.”

“Only because I have to,” Karliah murmurs, though she is slightly reassured. She drops her head onto the pillow and tries not to think of the Imperial boy she’d left bleeding in the snow.


	3. Works of Mercy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've edited this document so many times we can only hope it's still coherent. Shoutout to valtheimm on tumblr for beta-ing.

Ottavio doesn’t stay conscious long enough to have any idea of how long his rescuer carries him. He wakes briefly to feel himself be deposited on his back on a long, waist-high surface that he can barely feel. The soft, chiming glow of Restoration magic that he can barely see through the slits of his swollen eyes is the only source of light in the room, and it just barely illuminates his rescuer’s white, blood and dirt-stained linen dress. Thin cloth, out in the middle of Skyrim’s northernmost province? But they do not shiver, and their hands are completely steady as magicka pours from them.

“You’re lucky,” the figure notes, but Ottavio can’t remain conscious long enough to hear why.

 

* * *

 

The next time Ottavio wakes, his body is on fire.

The blaze scorches his skin, his muscles, his eyes, and he jolts limply, trying to squirm away -- a hand clamps down onto his shoulder, keeps him in an iron grip and prevents his escape. Wild with panic, Ottavio thrashes weakly against the restraint.

“Stop moving,” the voice from earlier orders, tone as iron as their grip. “I know it hurts. That means your nerves are recovering from the frostbite, and your body is starting to feel some of the truly _catastrophic_ damage that was done to it. I’m not going to hold you down and heal you at the same time, so _stop moving_.”

Even with all his strength, the most Ottavio can accomplish is a final weak convulsion and a pitiful sob. Agony wracks his body, and this can’t -- this can’t be healing magic. It’s too violent, it can’t -- it hurts, it hurts it hurts _please stop --_

It doesn’t stop, and Ottavio passes out once more, briefly, before the healing revives him again. The cycle of healing, agony, brief unconsciousness and respite, and terrified revival continues for what feels like an eternity, an eternity in Coldharbour, surely, or the Deadlands -- the hell continues, the pain worsens and worsens until it finally crests -- and Ottavio is a trembling, sobbing mess as the horrific burning begins to gradually fade. Finally. Finally.

“We aren’t done yet,” drones his healer, his most recent tormentor, “but the worst of it is over. Should be, anyway.”

Ottavio nods numbly. The healer, still hunched over him with sharp face focused and hands aglow, allows this minor movement, so Ottavio carefully lifts his head off what he realizes is a wooden table to better look at himself. His eyes are still swollen, one shut completely, but it is enough to do inventory of himself. At some point, the healer had stripped him bare, presumably to work on him better; completely reasonable, Ottavio reminds himself, although he still can’t quite crush the instinctive wave of revulsion and violation at the sight of his bare skin, exposed to all eyes. He swallows his discomfort with a handful of deep breaths, and silently takes stock of himself. His normally swarthy skin is frighteningly dull and mottled  as if all his blood was drained. Two ragged, bloodless gashes sit on either side of his navel, the skin still protruding up at the edges of the wounds. Higher up his torso- a coin-sized puncture wound just above his heart.

The events at Snow Veil Sanctum come sluggishly back to him, and he slowly rests his head back onto the table. Mercer telling him to take the lead, letting him walk right into the path of a poisoned arrow. A full conversation between Mercer and that voice -- Karliah, it must have been. A conversation about Gallus..and Nightingales. And then Mercer’s soulless eyes staring down at him, boring into his body worse than his Dwemer blades.

And then someone dragged him outside and abandoned him in the snow to die.

That Mercer murdered Gallus, and maybe even framed Karliah for it -- that Ottavio has no trouble believing in at all. For a long time Ottavio practically idolized the Guildmaster; there’s never been any real charisma to the man, no real charm secretly hidden under the surly temper, but if anything, Mercer has always been the epitome of the professional. The leader. No-nonsense, practical, and ruthless; a strong leader the Guild needed and depended on to get them through the rough years.

For a long time, Mercer was able to hide his true nature under a pretense of pragmatism. Is _still_ able to hide it, at least from the rest of the Guild. _Ottavio_ has known of Mercer’s cruelty, his malice. Has known of it since the Guildmaster used Ottavio’s admiration to lure him in close, close enough to shut the jaws of his trap. Ottavio just… thought himself the only victim of Mercer’s venom.

_It appears Gallus’s history has repeated itself._

How stupid, how _arrogant_ , for Ottavio to think he was the only one. He should have known. He should have seen it coming.

A familiar bitterness and hatred well up inside Ottavio’s chest and throat. It’s all he can do to keep it from welling up in his eyes, too; he takes a shaky breath, trying to calm himself.

“Nearly finished,” the healer’s voice breaks Ottavio free of his thoughts. “Your main organs are working again, and your skin can recover on its own now. Though at this point, I’m just going to go ahead and spare you the discomfort.”

Ottavio lifts his head again and flexes his fingers and toes experimentally; every movement is met with resistance, and his itching skin has gone from too dull to too rosy. The swelling around his good eye has gone down somewhat, but his vision is still a bit unfocused. He braces himself again for the searing pain of healing, but this time, the careful movements of the healer’s glowing fingertips bring first only a horrible itch, and then nothing. Ottavio raises his arm, and the movement is easy and the skin is back to its normal bronze. He watches transfixed as the magic soothes away the swelling and blisters the frostbite had created.

For the first time in gods know how long, Ottavio recovers his tongue. “Thank you,” he says, voice hoarse but full of sincerity despite the painful ordeal.At least he can feel again. Besides, it’s easier to be thankful than to think about what happened at the Sanctum.

The healer _hmmm_ s in response, gaze still fixed on his body below their glowing fingertips, making Ottavio painfully conscious of his nakedness. He turns his attention toward the healer instead, barely makes out the slight feminine curves of the torso and smallness of shoulders in the dim glow.  Her slender hands up to her forearms are covered in what Ottavio realizes is his own blood and gore; no tools rest on the table, and her long fingernails still drip red. The sight of it nearly makes Ottavio empty his stomach then and there. His nausea and unease are compounded by how the light fails to reach above her slender neck, and it is more than a little disconcerting to hear words and be unable to see the lips moving.

“I found you out there in the snow, half your face frozen to the ground. Barely breathing, pulse next to nothing. That arrow wound reeked of paralysis poison, so you can thank whoever shot you for slowing your heartbeat enough to not bleed out from those gashes, though I find it likely that it also hastened the process of your body freezing from the inside and out.”

“These,” she waves her hand dismissively over the scars near his navel, “were easy to fix. Your frostbite was another matter. You spent so long in the snow your tissues began to die. You got blisters and swelling all over your right side. And your skin started to come off. _And_ you had a concussion.”

Finally, the glow of the Restoration spell dims completely, leaving only a makeshift fireplace at the far wall, dying and barely spitting embers, as the only source of light. She pauses, and Ottavio imagines the wry grin he cannot see. “Luckily for you, I am a _very_ good healer.”

“Who _are_ you?” Ottavio asks, awe and maybe a little bit of dread creeping at the edges of his words. Mercer had left him half frozen at death’s feet, and yet now he sits up with what seems like no effort. Skyrim’s courts and colleges have few true masters of magic, and none of Restoration. Even if Ottavio has little knowledge of magic himself, he knows well enough that the litany of injuries she listed would determine him a lost cause in the eyes of most, even the best, of Skyrim’s mages, even with all their delicate tools and potent potions. And here he sits, breathing and _living_ , in a stone hut in the middle of Skyrim’s barren north.

The healer draws back from him, leaning back in her little wooden chair; with her back to the fire, all but her most general features are obscured by shadow. “Oh, I’m just some wanderer,” she says dismissively. “You can call me Araelle.”

She cocks her head slightly to the side, as if unsure of how to say her next words. “You’re going to make a full recovery, but I was unable to save the eye on the side of your face that was against the snow. It essentially froze. I was able to fix the rest of your face, but eyes are such delicate things…”

Ottavio’s hand flies towards his face with a start. He gropes about his face helplessly, realizing with growing horror that his right eye isn’t swollen shut, _it’s gone dark_.

After several long moments, Ottavio forces himself to speak, his words coming in stilted tones that sound like they belong to someone else, “Thank you, Araelle.” Because Ottavio knows the second chance he’s just been given is a precious thing indeed, and, truthfully, the shock over his eye keeps him from being able to think about anything else. “You didn’t have to save me.”

Araelle shrugs, the shadow of her bony shoulders cutting abruptly into the firelight. “I know. I like to have a challenging project every once in a while. It keeps me sharp.”

Ottavio doesn’t let himself be insulted at being called a project; if saving lives is her hobby, then he hardly has any reason to criticize. Even being half blind is better than being dead. “How much do I owe you?” he asks, aware that some people like to be _paid_ for their hobbies.

Araelle snorts in laughter, the shuddering of her thin frame making the firelight shadows erratic. “Your _life_ , boy. You’re lucky I’m not interested in monetizing that.”

He _is_ lucky, given that Mercer, as had been his wont the past couple years, had relieved him of his gold when the two set out from Riften. “I don’t owe you anything? I-I’m Ottavio, by the way,” he quickly adds, nearly forgetting himself.

“You don’t owe me money,” Araelle assures. “Just your company for awhile would be fine. Although, when you feel better and this storm dies down, maybe you would accompany me to Dawnstar, Ottavio?”

It may be a question rather than a demand, but Ottavio is far too indebted to decline. “Of course,” he answers, a little too quickly. Dawnstar will put him a ways from Riften, but it is a port, and he can always take a boat down the coast and White River until he reaches Eastmarch. From there --

From there _what?_ Return to Mercer?

“You’re supposed to think it over _before_ you agree,” Araelle notes, amusement making the barb soft and harmless. Ottavio cringes in embarrassment anyway.

“No, sorry, that’s not it --  I’ll still do it,” Ottavio stumbles on his words in his rush to reassure her. “I just… I don’t really know what I’ll do after.” Besides getting an eyepatch, maybe. Ottavio still doesn't let himself think about it yet. His eye will... He'll have to come to terms with it later, _after_ he has a gracious and civil conversation with his rescuer.

(Later, when he has a chance to cry by himself if he wants, and he knows he will --)

Araelle crosses her arms and leans back in her rickety chair, her face hidden by shadows. The way the firelight glows behind her and outlines her frame and white hair, it looks as if there is simply a black mass where her face ought to be. “Well, I suppose you could stay with me. How did you get out here, anyway? What happened to you?”

Ottavio hesitates, trying to think of an explanation that makes even the slightest amount of sense. Something more coherent than _My boss brought me along to kill someone he framed for murder and then used me as a human shield before trying to finish me off himself_. “I was betrayed by someone I know.”

“Well, you can’t be betrayed by someone you _don’t_ know,” Araelle replies, tone light. “I saw that dead horse outside and figured someone had left you.” Even if Ottavio can’t see her face, he can practically feel her eyes boring into him, judging him. He cringes again.

“Yeah, sorry…” he mumbles. “My -- my boss and I came to, uh, meet someone, someone we’ve been trying to find for awhile now. She shot me, and my boss tried to finish me off. You said the paralysis poison kept me alive. I don’t know how I got outside, though.”

“The paralytic stopped your blood flow, yes,” Araelle answers. “I suppose that was _two_ someones who betrayed you, then.”

Ottavio smiles ruefully. “No, we knew -- we went there to kill her. She was supposed to be a traitor. Now I’m not sure she betrayed anyone. My boss, though -- I always figured he’d be done with me at some point. I just didn’t think he’d _kill_ me.”

But of course Mercer would kill him; the real question is why Ottavio didn’t realize it sooner. Ottavio had simply expected Mercer would kick him out of the Guild eventually, and that would have been bad enough. But two years of relentless scorn and humiliation, of unrepentant violence and abuse should have made Mercer’s intentions _abundantly_ clear. The realization bites sharp and bitter, makes him choke and seizes his chest. _Idiot, idiot, absolute fucking idiot, what did you expect_ \--

“Hey.”

Araelle’s voice pulls him from his anguish; it isn’t sweet or gentle or comforting, is almost matter-of-fact, but even that is enough as an anchor. Araelle makes no movement to hold or touch him, and somehow Ottavio is thankful that she doesn’t. “You need to rest. Crying too hard might aggravate your wounds if you aren’t careful.”

“I’m sorry,” Ottavio wipes his good eye and tries not to blubber. He isn’t even surprised at how quickly he loses all composure; a pattern with him, to be sure.

“Stand,” Araelle orders, and Ottavio clumsily slings his legs off the table; she has to help him actually stand upright, holds him by the shoulders and helps him hobble over to a fur bedroll near the fire.

The singular bedroll, now that Ottavio is looking. He crawls in anyway. “Where will _you_ sleep?”

Araelle looks down at him, and for the first time, the firelight fully frees her face from shadow. Ottavio freezes in terror.

“Go to sleep,” the vampire commands. And, despite himself, Ottavio does; sleep drags him down into vulnerable unconsciousness, and in his last few moments of wakefulness he feels an eerie kinship with the stone-leaden corpses of Lake Honrich.

 

* * *

 

Ottavio does not dream; he wakes slowly, gradually shedding the soft obliviousness that clings to one after a good night’s sleep. He snuggles further into the warmth of the fur blankets, cocooning himself in the safety of --

the safety of --

laying face down in the snow for hours, his blood pouring out onto the ground, slowly, motionlessly freezing from the inside out --

dark-ringed, bright amber eyes shining against black sclera in the firelight, bloodless lips, emaciated white skin pulled over a gaunt, sharp-boned face staring down at him --

Ottavio’s blood runs cold with no regard to the warm furs or nearby fireplace. Instinct and training take hold -- if the hell of waking up bruised and bloody on the floor of Riftweald Manor can be called _training_ \-- and Ottavio takes a deep, quiet breath. The cold air fills his mouth and lungs like the ultra calm, resolute _terror_ that steels his nerves and steadies his hands -- the primal terror that has guided him from death more than once. Fear now, his instinct warns, _panic_ later.

Slowly, cautiously, he opens his good eye to check for immediate danger; only the sight of gray, stone wall inches in front of him greets him. Shadows from the fire still flicker in the periphery of his vision, somewhere in the vicinity of his feet. Narrow slants of dim sunlight provide enough light to look around, if he’s willing to roll over to his other side and face the rest of the room. Face the risk of the vampire knowing he’s awake.

… Not yet. Ottavio huddles his shoulders toward his chin and carefully runs his hands along the sides of his neck. No bite marks. He’s still naked, though, and revulsion roils in his gut as Ottavio slowly, carefully checks his body for punctures. Smooth skin, mostly, save some long, lacerated ridges on his torso that are probably what are now scars from Mercer’s swords. Ottavio can’t get to his lower legs or most of his back, not without moving more obviously, but mostly he seems okay. Unharmed.

Maybe -- maybe if he rolls onto his back, eyes closed, still pretending to be asleep, he’ll feel pain if there are any bite marks. Maybe that will work. Just, slowly, carefully -- but there’s seemingly nothing on his back, either, at least nothing painful like a bite.

There is no sound except the crackling of sticks and straw being consumed by a dying fire. No birds, no wind, no movement. Ottavio reluctantly peaks; on his back, he can see a little more of the room in the periphery of his vision. Either the vampire has left, or she is being very, very still.

Minutes tick by. If she is gone, he has a limited window of time to flee that he cannot waste. If she is there, he cannot let her know he is awake. Ottavio fakes sleepily rolling onto his side so that he is facing the room rather than the wall. Minutes tick by, in silence. No sound of movement.

Taking the gamble, Ottavio dispenses with pretending to be asleep, and thankfully -- thankfully, his intuition is correct. The silence, the room is empty. The vampire is gone.

He isn’t safe, not quite yet; Ottavio slips out of the furs and pads across the cold stone floor, carefully checking the narrow windows and door of the concentric shelter’s inner room. No one in the outer circle, no one on the outside steps in the buffeting wind and snow. Trying not to shiver, Ottavio scans the inner room for his belongings; his undergarments, trousers, and thin under tunic are neatly folded on the same table he had been healed on. His boots and gloves are tucked next to the table’s legs, but his Guild armor, heavy over tunic and cloak are gone. His weapons are gone, too, but that is less surprising -- no doubt they were back in Snow Veil Sanctum. Besides, what use is a steel dagger against a _vampire?_

Ottavio dons his clothes with a speed and efficiency only somewhat impaired by his worsened depth perception and his shaking fingers, from the cold or fear, it didn’t matter. Reluctant to push his luck with Winterhold’s weather for a second time, he grabs the fur sleeping bag and wraps it around his shoulders as a substitute for his insulating overgarments, cloak and hood. It’s clumsy and does little to protect his legs, but it’s all he has. Between the cold and the vampire, at least the cold won’t eat him. With no other options, Ottavio creeps out of the sanctuary. 

Outside, the weather has worsened over the course of the night (was it one night, or longer?), as the wind carries sheets of snow that hide the daytime sun and much of the surrounding landscape. On one side, a mountain rises up in the distance and disappears into the low-hanging clouds; on the other, the rolling ground eventually completely vanishes in the heavy curtains of falling snow. Toward the mountain it is, then.

Ottavio trudges through the tall snow, clumsily clearing a path for himself that he knows will be easy for anyone to follow; hopefully the snow will cover it again quickly. He has no idea how far the vampire carried him from Snow Veil Sanctum or how far he is from Winterhold’s little village -- or what _direction_ to go, or --

No. It isn’t time to panic yet. One step at a time, Tavi. One bumbling, awkward-legged step, toward the mountain looming in the distance. Even if Winterhold is still far off, Ottavio faintly recalls from the Guild’s map of Skyrim that the little town is nestled against the ridge of a mountain range. He just… hopes this is the _right side_ of it.

The sun, hidden behind thick, ominous clouds, provides little light that only further dims as Ottavio lumbers along. The sleeping bag is barely wide enough to stretch around his shoulders and still be pulled to reach the middle of his chest, but more than that it is _heavy_. Wind whips at his face, legs and abdomen until Ottavio is shivering violently, totally blind and barely able to keep the furs from slipping out of his grip. Still, he carries on.

Eventually, the clear-headed terror drains from Ottavio’s mind, leaving only sweeping, stabbing _misery_ in its wake. He is going to die. He is going to die out here, if he continues. He can’t win, not against this weather. The mountain remains far, far in the distance; even then, there’s no telling where Winterhold is. His luck has run out. His choice is a bitter one; he can die alone in the cold, or die at the hands of a vampire. But it is a choice nonetheless.

  


Ottavio reluctantly turns back.

 

* * *

 

It is by sheer luck -- thank the gods, if they deserve it -- that Ottavio finds his stumbling way back to the little stone shelter, now half-buried in the snow. Hands shaking, legs numb and all grace gone, Ottavio clumsily peeks into the first concentric hallway; he holds fast to the narrow slits in the stone wall in an attempt to keep his well-worn, snow-leaden boots from giving up on keeping traction between his feet and the smooth floor.

The hallway is clear, so Ottavio slowly, loudly -- there is no grace left to half-frozen thieves -- makes his way to the inner chamber.

The fire has finally died, of course. There is little light left outside, and little to none of it makes it into the shelter’s inner chamber. Dark, cold, and silent -- but empty, seemingly, and steadfastly firm against the blizzard’s bitter wind. Ottavio drops the heavy sleeping furs onto the ground, knowing damn well that they’re too soggy with snow to warm him now, kicks his boots off and settles cross-legged on the sodden mass. His good eye will hopefully adjust to the darkness soon, and he can start looking for food, if any --

“You giving up, then? I was wondering if you’d make it back.”

Ottavio practically throws himself to his feet at the vampire’s amused voice. He can’t see her, can’t quite tell where she is -- she’s wearing all white, isn’t she? Linen-thin white dress, pale white skin, stringy white hair -- he should be able to see _something_ \--

“I’m right here.” A delicate hand, skin nearly translucent for all its visible spiderweb veins, gently alights on Ottavio’s arm, carefully squeezing his bicep.

Ottavio freezes. The hand stays, its grip light and painless. Not hurting, yet. Nails like talons jut out from the thin, bony fingers that curl cold around him like vines clinging to a post.

This isn’t the time, but Ottavio can’t help but remember a Dawnguard recruiter’s self-righteous scorn. _That's what everybody says,_ the orc had snapped derisively, more than a little irked at Ottavio’s childish wisecracks, _right up until they find their throat being ripped out by a pack of hungry vampires_.

_throat ripped out_

Those nails look capable of it.

Ottavio breathes shakily. “ _Please_ ,” he whispers, somehow terrified that volume will trigger the worst. His eyes fill with tears, making his vision blurry.

The vampire scoffs and allows her hand to drop from his arm. Tall and graceful, she sweeps past him and over to the dead fireplace, white figure barely visible in the darkness. “None of that, now,” Araelle scolds, her clear voice stern and haughty, with an authority and imperiousness to match Maven Black-Briar herself. “I went out of my way to save your life and in return asked for nothing but your company. I haven’t done anything for you to be so scared of me.”

Ottavio shrinks in on himself, suddenly brought to feeling like a misbehaving brat at Honorhall again. It would be funny, this vampire reminding him of old _Grelod_ , of all people, except that he can’t breathe, can’t stop crying, can’t stop trembling like a kicked dog expecting still worse to come. Terror wraps tightly around his chest, his heavy, numb limbs. He says nothing, sees nothing -- only hears the crashing _thunk_ s of fresh wood carelessly dropped into the fireplace, the little hiss of a fire born from magic.

Vampires don’t need heat, do they? They can certainly see in the dark. It dawns on him that the fire is for _his_ benefit.

 _Unless vampires like cooked meat_. Ottavio mentally curses his past self for not paying the Dawnguard recruiter any mind, for not asking a single damn question. Vampires had been a myth then, as far as Ottavio had been concerned -- if not in reality, then in practicality. What were the chances of him, a mere thief in one of Skyrim’s most crowded cities, ever meeting a vampire? Vampires don’t live in cities. They live in scary stories made up by friends over a fire and mead, they live in cautionary tales intended to keep young farm children from venturing too far from home too close to sundown, they live in Brynjolf’s lies invented to sell some new miraculous elixir to the fools in the market. At the very least, they live far outside the walled city of Riften, far from the attention of the Thieves Guild.

Of course, Ottavio is far from Riften, with only his mates’ bedtime stories to inform him, and the vampire before him is terrifyingly real.

Light cautiously reclaims the little shelter as the fire grows with supernatural quickness brought on by Araelle’s hand. The outline of her tall, bony figure glows white and otherworldly in the firelight, more like an aedra than a vampire. Shadows would make her face difficult to see, except that her golden eyes seem to cast their own light, dimly illuminating wide cheekbones and narrow jaw. The yellow light somehow manages to drain her skin of even more color than the firelight.

Ottavio unconsciously steps back, the stone floor’s chill a shock to his bare feet. His gut roils and his shaking has little to do with the cold. To his shame, warm liquid drips down his pants leg.

Araelle scrunches her broad, flat nose, but does little else to hint at her disgust. “You know,” she says, her tone blase, “if I’d wanted to hurt you, I would have already done so. I wouldn’t have let you even wake up.”

Ottavio trembles. The quiet that fills the room demands a response. Somehow, he stutters, “Then what -- what do you want to -- want to do to me -- do _with_ me?” Do _to him_. Gods, it sounds -- too physical, too --

“I told you, I just wanted a project to keep me sharp. And now I just want company, if you’re willing to give it.”

 _It’s not like I can go anywhere else,_ Ottavio realizes frantically. Between the blizzard and the vampire, at least the blizzard has already decided it will kill him.

Satisfied with the fire, Araelle turns and fetches a burlap bag from the table and from it produces several dead fish, two knives, some pins, and a long string that she hangs above the fireplace.

“I thought you might be hungry, then I came back and you were gone.” Araelle says as way of explanation. “Hang up the blankets in front of the fire and put your cloak and leathers on before you freeze, and then help me clean these.”

It takes a moment for Ottavio to realize what is happening - that she is saving him, caring for him, again - but then he lurches rigidly to obey her command. Araelle points to his woolly over-tunic, heavy cloak, and armor, laid out on the table right where his other clothes had been, and Ottavio dons them numbly. They weren’t there before; there’s no way he could have missed them, even in the dark, right? Ottavio mourns that there is no spare set of trousers, and hesitantly decides that sitting in his own filth is better than letting the cold nip at his bare skin.

Ottavio takes the knife and the fish, tucks himself between the wall and the fire, as small and still as possible, and does his work quietly, even if his vision is blurry and his hands still shake a little and the knife or fish aren't quite where they look like they are. Gutting a fish, at least, he knows how to do; an easy, familiar task to distract from the surreal nightmare his life has abruptly become. Growing up in Riften left him with few legitimate skills, but by the gods does he (and every other Riften streetrat) know more about fish than he ever cared to. He slowly adjusts to his odd depth perception, his breathing gradually slows back to a steady calm as he inhales the pungent smell of fish guts and the slightly more tolerable smell of cooking fish meat, and his hunger threatens to dwarf his fear. By the time the fish meat is ready, Ottavio is too hungry to care that it is stringy and unsalted, and that he has no utensils; he devours every bit of meat that Araelle hands him.

Araelle does not eat. _So vampires_ don’t _eat cooked meat, it seems._

“I’m sorry-- thank you. Again.” Ottavio mumbles when the last cooked fish is but crumbs, watching Araelle as she artfully uses ice magic to freeze the leftovers. “For saving me. And caring for me.”

Araelle hums noncommittally. She is a _little_ less terrifying facing the full glow of the fire. With sunken eyes and the heavy bags underneath, brittle lips, and emaciated frame jutting out under the thin linen, she looks… well, half-dead. Long and pointed ears stick out from her mass of silver hair and look almost pink in the firelight.

“You’re welcome. I do hope you start to feel somewhat less frightened around me now, Ottavio.”

He cringes, hoping the visible embarrassment hides his persistent anxiety. “Yes, I’m… sorry. For being scared of you. You’ve been very kind to me.”

Araelle looks him over with a critical eye. “Mm, it’s not your fault. You’d be a fool not to be scared of a vampire. Just try and relax. You know now that you’re alright.”

Ottavio knows he is alright, but the instinctive fear of the predator keeps his blood cold and skin trembling throughout the rest of the day. And into the next, and the next, until the blizzard finally subsides and Araelle has shown no interest in hunting anything but fish for Ottavio to eat or firewood to keep him warm. By the time Ottavio ventures outside again, mentally preparing himself for the journey to Dawnstar, he does not flinch or cower when Araelle stands beside him.


	4. Lull

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short, transitional chapter, but the next chapter is basically finished (aside from editing) and should go up soon anyway. Also, I know the College of Winterhold doesn't have doors in the dorm buildings. I am claiming artistic license and ignoring it, and will continue to do so for most of Skyrim's lackluster environmental worldbuilding.

Daily life at a College full of mages in the northernmost part of Skyrim brings with it bizarre sounds and conversations that Karliah can only barely identify and make out. Barely awake and mind still heavy with sleep, Karliah listens to the various clinkingof glass, the discordant discharges of spells, and conversations of varying tones and volumes. The tower room has no windows - likely to keep the cold out - so Karliah has no idea what time it is, or how long it is until she is fully awoken by a series of successive thumps, followed closely by a glass-shattering crash and a very loud, very irate swearing. Karliah jolts upright and half throws herself out of bed, instinctively groping about for her dagger; it takes several moments for her to remember the mages tucked her equipment safely between the tall wardrobe and wall, and she holds her blade at the ready.

“It’s okay!” someone calls into the hall; Karliah can hear the thudding footsteps of multiple people rushing up the stairs, summoned by the noise. “Everything is okay, no need to panic! It was just a small miscalculation! Everything is okay!”

Karliah slowly sinks into a nearby chair and exhales in relief, her fingers trembling from the abrupt transition from near sleep to adrenaline-fueled terror. Should he manage to infiltrate the College, Mercer will not do so loudly or carelessly; still, the unfortunate mage’s small miscalculation sounded far too similar to an artless break-in to Karliah’s thief-trained mind.

The College of Winterhold is one of the most difficult places in Skyrim to infiltrate; even Gallus considered it too risky for non-College members to try. Every day, the campus grounds see priceless spell tomes, costly jewelry and equipment with intricate and powerful enchantments, soul gems of all sizes, invaluably rare ingredients and recipes of all sorts, and on it goes. The flow of wealth through the College’s halls keeps Winterhold’s tiny excuse of a village afloat and supplied with both luxuries and essentials. Compared to the rest of Skyrim, the College of Winterhold is wealthy in a way that most Nords can only dream of.

And it takes _quite_ a bit of danger for that wealth to remain so untouched. Even if the College were not so physically inaccessible, perched precariously on a high peak separated from the mainland with only its narrow bridge and apparently mysterious remote cave, the mages inside would provide their own deterrent. Even Mercer will hesitate to try it, should he suspect that Karliah made it out of the ice fields alive and into the College.

Somewhat reassured, Karliah gingerly places her dagger on the bed and takes a moment to breathe. Her clothes and armor have yet to be returned from being repaired and mended, but a set of college mages’ robes sit neatly folded in the wardrobe, and Karliah slips off her borrowed nightwear and exchanges it for the fur-lined robes, boots, and gloves, feeling warmer than she has in months. By Nocturnal’s grace, if Karliah is still alive after everything is settled, she’s going to make sure that Enthir gets more jewels and gold than he knows what to do with.

The college bell tower rings an hour and a half by the time the Bosmer himself appears, his arms laden with plates of salted fish, clam chowder, bread, and a generous mug of ale. Karliah finds her appreciation with him and the College growing by the minute.

“What are they charging for this?” she asks, mindful of the Breton sorceress’s yesterday comments on room and board. The bland food is better than what Karliah can prepare at a campfire, at least, although most Dunmer would consider it an insult to food. Still, even with all of the mages’ magical luxuries, it’s likely that few spices have made it this far north off the major trade routes since the civil war began.

Enthir grimaces. “Well, it’s the only shop in town unless you want to go to the inn, so, entirely too much. It’s almost criminal. Especially for you, since you’re not a member.”

“I’ll pay you back,” Karliah promises.

“I know you will, or else I wouldn’t have vouched for you. Your business is always good.”

Karliah lowers her plate, carefully settling it in her lap. “Speaking of business, you ought to know what’s happening. Or, some of it.”

Enthir straightens in his chair, waiting expectantly. Karliah sends him over to fetch her small pack, and retrieves a leatherbound journal from it. Enthir takes it with trepidation. “Is it…?”

“Yes, it is,” Karliah says, grimly. “But there’s a problem. Open it.”

Enthir does so, and breaks into a sneering guffaw. “Oh, that’s _just_ like him. Oh, Gallus. Always too clever for his own good. He’s written all the text in the Falmer language.” There’s a sincere warmth to his tone, and maybe some awe, too. Karliah watches woodenly, afraid that voicing any admiration for Gallus will open the gates to _other_ feelings for the dead man.

To Gallus’s credit, he deserves the admiration. The neat, curved script of Falmeris stares back at them, completely incomprehensible. When Karliah first found the journal, the familiar handwriting brought her both comfort and agony - even with Gallus gone, traces, _tangible_ traces, of him remained. Now, the words just frustrate and taunt her. All the proof she needs to bring Mercer down, and she can’t even read it.

“Do you know anyone who can translate it?” Karliah asks, tuning out Enthir’s fascination with the dead language. She had tried so, so hard to understand Gallus’s academic preoccupations, but.. Some things were beyond her. At least Enthir appreciated them.

“Hm, maybe. Soon after Gallus’s death, the court wizard of Markarth, Calcelmo, requested all of his surviving research on the Falmer. There wasn’t much left to send him, but to my knowledge Calcelmo is the only notable scholar with any professional interest in the Falmer. He mainly specializes in the Dwemer, but where there’s Dwemer, there’s Falmer. Be careful with him, though. Calcelmo is infamously protective of his research.”

Karliah scoffs. “It’s not entirely his research though, is it?” It’s just like academics, to beg for another’s work and guard it more jealously than if they’d spent their whole lives constructing it themselves. It was one of the many grievances against academia that Gallus had harbored.

“Is there any of Gallus’s research still here?” she asks. “Or, any of his possessions?”

Enthir hesitates, evidently not wanting to raise her hopes. “Yes, but… well, the College keeps all copies of faculty publications. Gallus’s notes and unfinished research are all gone, but some of his articles and books remain. I can’t promise that any of it is relevant, but I can maybe get some to you as keepsakes.”

Keepsakes. The idea of having Gallus’s words again - not his personal letters that soak in his charming personality, or his love letters Karliah treasured so - but still, having reminders of his sharp acuity and passion… Karliah can’t help her smile. “I think I would very much like that.”

Outside in the courtyard, the howling wind whips a branch against the window, making both Karliah and Enthir jump.

Enthir chuckles at their own overreaction. “The blizzard started getting much worse early this morning. Good thing you got to us when you did.” More seriously, he adds, “it’s possible that Mercer might show up in town, though. He doesn’t have many other places to go in this weather. We should stay on campus until the storm clears, give him the chance to leave.”

The reminder of the outside world sends a cruel shock through Karliah’s spine. _Gods, she forgot. How did she forget?_

“I need to get back to Snow Veil Sanctum, as quickly as possible,” she blurts out, nearly spilling her plate in her attempt to jump off the bed. “I left someone back there, laying outside. He’s going to freeze if someone doesn’t go get him.”

Enthir catches the plate before it can slide off the edge of the bed. “Woah, wait. You left someone? Who?”

“I- I don’t know. One of the Guildmembers- Mercer brought him, used him as a human shield and turned on him when he couldn’t get me- I tried bringing him back but Mercer attacked again-”

“Calm down, calm down.” Enthir raises his hands slowly, as if dealing with a skittish horse. “You’re in no condition to go anywhere - in this cold, no one is - and Mercer is probably nearby. He might be waiting for you to leave the College and try and go back.”

After a moment, Enthir reluctantly adds, “Besides, you’ve been here… eighteen hours? Not counting however long you were out in the ice fields. Karliah, I’m sorry, it’s probably already too late. And this is assuming Mercer didn’t kill him after he attacked you again.”

Enthir’s words are… entirely too reasonable. Karliah steadies herself against the tall wardrobe, her head spinning in protest at her abrupt and somewhat foolish decision to be fully upright and on her feet. Enthir cautiously offers an arm in support and leads Karliah back to the bed.

“Look,” Enthir tries, his voice full of hesitation. “No one is going to go out there right now. But after the blizzard clears, I can ask if one of the other mages will go back with you. The Dragonborn usually searches out those kinds of ruins, and she helps people, so maybe she’ll do it.”

Karliah looks at him incredulously, not entirely sure how to respond.  “The _Dragonborn_?”

“She’s faculty,” he says, casually, as if it weren’t the strangest thing he’s said here. “She’s actually the one that carried you out of the ice fields, the big Altmer with the red hair? Doesn’t usually stay more than a month or two at a time, especially lately, but when she’s here she teaches classes on Atromancy and Shock magic. A real terror to the apprentices, that one.”

Karliah considers it. “Do you think she’ll-”

“She won’t go out in this weather. She’s an _Altmer_ , she complains when it’s warm. Well, warm for here. But, I can ask.”

Karliah takes his hands in hers, sincerity warming her voice. “I would appreciate it. You’re doing a lot for me, Enthir, and I won’t forget that.”

Enthir’s blush is something she won’t forget either, and she fends off a giggle. “Yeah, well, I am expecting compensation of some kind. Fencing for the Thieves’ Guild again, and maybe some favors too, would be nice.”

“If they take me back, consider it done.”

 

* * *

  

The Dragonborn, Karliah learns, is a generous and often helpful person. An enormous asset to the College as an institution and to the individual students and faculty, willing to track down missing books and apprentices alike, taking on impossible endeavors for her colleagues and pupils. Dangerous and helpful, the Dragonborn is the natural choice for the mission; if anyone can fend off Mercer, it’s the woman who brings down dragons.

“She said no,” Enthir relays flatly.

Karliah stares at him. “She said no. Not even for money.”

Enthir scratches the back of his head and gingerly closes the door.

“Well, she said a lot more than no,” Enthir says wryly. “I’ll spare you the lecture and the insults. The long and short of it is that she doesn’t know you or if anything you say is credible, or if you’re even worth helping further, especially in this weather, and for what will probably be a frozen corpse. Regardless of how much you say you’re willing to pay her, you don’t have the money right now. It doesn’t help that I can’t really tell her what’s going on; without more information, she’s assuming you’re a thief or an outlaw, and has no interest in helping what might be a feud between criminals.”

All of which… is true. Karliah grimaces.

“ _But_ ,” Enthir continues, somewhat hesitantly, “she does have an interest in the ruins. She said she’s willing to go check out the area, but only after the storm has cleared. If she finds anyone there, she’ll bring him back.”

Karliah stares at her hands, her lips a grim line. “He’ll be dead by then.”

Enthir has the decency to look remorseful, at least.

 

* * *

 

For the next few days, Karliah buries herself in Gallus’s work while the blizzard rages. Enthir is, of course, right; there is nothing immediately relevant or helpful in Gallus’s treatise on why Alteration magic shouldn’t simply be written off as the poor layman’s magic, or his guide on the benefits of mixing Enchanting and Alteration. But, Karliah takes comfort in his articulate arguments and his sharp wit that she had missed so much. After twenty-five years, Karliah had begun to fear that she had nothing left of him; his voice had long faded from her memory, and his face begins to slip away as well. Mercer has been thorough destroying his legacy, so that all Karliah has of Gallus is his impenetrable journal and the dire need to avenge him.

Not many pieces of Gallus’s work survives, but what does is dense enough that Karliah is still neck deep in them three days later when the snow stops falling. She barely manages not to start when Enthir quietly knocks on the door and slips inside the room.

“The Dragonborn might be going out to the ruins soon,” he says, carefully setting down some fresh new candles on the nightstand to replace the ones Karliah has been burning through. “She promised if she found anyone still alive out there, she’d bring them back immediately. She knows Mercer might be skulking about, so she won’t be going in blind.”

Karliah nods, somewhat numb. Twenty-five years since Gallus’s murder, she’s spent most of it relying on herself. Sure, she’s had some help, but only from people she’d contracted or bribed, people she thought she could use to her advantage as intermediaries -- Gulum-Ei, Aringoth, all people she had researched thoroughly and decided could play a small part in her intricate scheme. Few of them she allowed to work fully independent of her instructions and watchful eye. Even fewer did she expect to help for nothing. And yet here she sits, waiting on the Dragonborn, totally dependent on her to do the job right. The helplessness of it all buries a pit in Karliah’s stomach.

 

The Dragonborn sets out two hours after breakfast, bundled in furs and armed to the teeth.

She leaves through town rather than leave a less noticeable way, to Karliah’s quiet dismay. Enthir tries to reassure her -- Mercer isn’t looking for a College mage, after all, but he probably _is_ watching for anyone taking the more hidden trails heading out of town, and the Dragonborn would look more suspicious taking them than the main road -- but Karliah shoos him away so she can wring her hands in private. What if Mercer suspects something? Has she just sent a woman -- and the Dragonborn at that -- to her death?

By the time the sun slips under the horizon -- an admittedly early occurrence here, so far north -- Karliah has finished all of Gallus’s writings. She’s on her second reading of a treatise she _still_ does not fully understand when a knock comes at the door. Karliah opens it fully expecting Enthir, and is taken aback when she is greeted instead by the Dragonborn herself, still covered in frost and tracking snow.

The Imperial is not with her.

“I wanted to thank you for the tip about Snow Veil Sanctum, it was quite helpful for me,” the Altmer rumbles. Karliah can’t help but think of a thundercloud when she speaks, albeit a very polite one. “I regret to inform you that there was no one there, either outside or inside, or buried under the snow. There was a dead horse, if that’s relevant. Unfortunately, all tracks have long been covered by the snow.”

Karliah’s ears ring. Not even a body? Did Mercer take him away? “The horse was mine,” she says, instead, because it’s all she can think to say. “Thank you for looking.”

The Dragonborn brushes the snow off her hood and coughs. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she adds, somewhat awkwardly, and quickly excuses herself. Karliah slowly shuts the door after her.

Another poor thief, conned and murdered by Mercer, and Karliah allowed it to happen. Again. There is nothing she can do to bring back Gallus, and probably little she could have done for the poor Imperial boy in the first place, but the tragedy of Gallus’s death has repeated itself once again and Karliah feels bile in her throat.

 

* * *

  

With both the weather clear and the Imperial boy gone, Karliah has little excuse to remain in Winterhold. She packs her things, profusely thanking the mages who so skillfully repaired her armor and the Master Wizard Mirabelle for allow her to stay, hugs Enthir tight and promises to pay him back his generosity tenfold, and follows the Dragonborn down into the Midden and out the little cave far below the College.

“Thank you for escorting me,” Karliah says, yet again, because the Dragonborn’s offer is more than anything Karliah could have dared ask her. If Mercer is looking for her, he’ll regret finding her with this titan of a mage and warrior. “I owe you a major debt.”

The Dragonborn grunts in acknowledgement, not bothering to look at her. “I’ll take you only as far as Mzinchaleft. There’s still a great deal of distance between there and Markarth.”

“It is enough,” Karliah says. Mercer is clever, but not omniscient, and he has little reason to expect her in Markarth. “It will have to be.”

The Dragonborn spares her a skeptical stare. “Avoid freezing water this time.”


End file.
